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On the Popularity of Games

Which Role Playing Game is the best role playing Game?

Wait, no.

Which is the most popular?

The truth is, we live in relative darkness about what games are being sold and what games are being played. To date, our best resource has been ICv2 which just tells us the top few best selling games through the retail channels.

This has allowed an awful lot of us to live in ignorance.  Didn't release a supplement this month? Nobody is playing your game!

What's more, is that the people in charge of the companies have no motivation to dispel any illusions the players have.

And it's not really a mud-slinging type industry—After all, products that focus on "fixing" things and are built around not having "problems" other gaming systems have don't do well. Or so I believe, and who's to tell me otherwise?

The Orr Group, that's who.

Who are the Orr Group? They are the Roll20 programmers who consumed Tabletop Forge when several people quit the project. (A slight exaggeration, Joshua Owen approached Roll20.) They provide a Virtual Table Top interface for people playing on-line games.

Now people don't like to have their illusions shattered. Anyone who doesn't like these numbers or facts will just come up with excuses about how it doesn't count home games, or people playing games on G+ online might not be using these pieces of software.

Well that's true. it's also true that those people don't understand statistics and sampling data either. After all, I play B/X so I don't need Roll20, so I'm not counted.

Let's look at the numbers we get for the third quarter of 2014.

THE ORR GROUP INDUSTRY REPORT is an overview of tabletop gaming ruleset popularity based on usage data from Roll20 Virtual Tabletop. Third Quarter results are as follows: Based on a sample size of approximately 25,000 games and 15,000 players.
Notes on how information is gathered:
  • “Games” = % of games where the Game Master said “this is what we’re playing.”
  • “Players” = % of players who were active in the quarter and filled in the “this is what I enjoy playing” field on their profile.
  • Percentages will total more than 100% because each player/game can have more than one game type designated. This is extremely common for players and rare for the games.
  • This only takes into account games/players which were active (e.g. game was played, player played at least one game) during the 3rd Quarter of 2014.
  • This is meant to be a representative sample, as it only takes into account games and players who filled out relevant fields on their game page/profile. There was significantly more than 25k games and 15k players who played in this quarter, but many do not fill out these fields.
  • The list of available games to select were curated by Roll20’s staff based on previous freeform survey results, and will be changing in the future.
Notes on Roll20 / THE ORR GROUP:
Roll20 began as an effort to keep developers and The Orr Group founders Riley Dutton, Nolan T. Jones, and Richard Zayas in touch via long distance gaming. Since launching via Kickstarter in April of 2012, Roll20 has attracted more than 600,000 users as a free service. The program continues to be funded by subscribers who receive features that assist advanced gameplay.

Did it match your expectations? Was the Popularity of the games played related to your internal narrative of which games are popular and which games are not?

Does it matter if more people are playing 1st edition than whatever game you are playing that isn't Dungeons and Dragons?
Hack & Slash 
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On Current Events

Quite a bit happened during my convalescence. Here are some of the things you might have missed.


  • +Patrick Stuart has released a hard copy of A False Machine. Some of the writing in here is the most meaningful and important ideas regarding role playing today. It's about 15$ and has a beautiful cover by +Scrap Princess of Monster Manual Sewn from Pants. The discussion in this book is actually insightful and concretely useful when compared to the usual "What is role-playing, how do I get to be a good DM" sort of tripe that is usually published. It is well worth the cost for either the hard copy or the e-pub version. It is a collection of blog posts, however, leading to the usual pacing and variation in importance issues in any type of collection like this. (Note that this is not Veins of the Earth, which is currently seeking a publisher)
  • Goblin Punch is on fire. Boss Mechanics, Familiars, Noise Wizards (Bard replacement), and the mind blowing Projectors -- Every day is better than the last. Best in the OSR.
  • +James Young has some excellent thoughts on improving my critical tables.
  • +PaoloGreco thinks Mysteries & Mystagogues is only worth 6$ for some reason. There's a print + pdf combo for 12$. I'm almost certain he makes these by hand, so that's madness. Which, I suppose, is the point. It's totally useful no matter which old school game you play, but also serves as an excellent setting and adventure guide for Adventure Fantasy Game, which is well worth your time.
  • Another Fantasy RPG, Dungeonteller is nearing release! Do you have young gamers or perhaps a wife or girlfriend you'd like to introduce to gaming? Simple colorful rules, bright graphics and fast gameplay make me super interested in this. The Hero Pack is available for free, right now on drivethrurpg, with the full game coming soon.
  • This is of relevant interest to all gamers. Transparent dice roll more randomly than opaque dice. Precision dice, excepting the sprue, roll the most randomly. Transparent dice, which are more expensive have to be processed and cooled slower, preventing them from having air bubbles. Their being subject to a polisher/edge remover can cause them to become egg shaped, favoring two sides over all others. Opaque dice are cheaper because they are cooled quickly, resulting in air bubbles. The air bubbles change the density distribution of the dice causing them to favor certain numbers over others. 
  • The old defunct Necromancer Games forums have been .zipped up for download. You can get them here for a short time. 
  • I forgot to mention the wonderful Dungeon Dozen book, by +Jason Sholtis is out!
I think the point here, is that even though the groundwork and basic theory of the OSR has been laid, all it means is that the real work has begun. And we can see the first fruits of those labors above. 


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On Player Level

No not character level, player level!

What's your experience point total?

Own an RPG50 Points
Own up to 10 RPGs500 Points
Own more than 10 RPGs800 Points
Own miniatures500 Points
Own more than 100 minatures 2,000 Points
Own more than 1000 minatures OR had your spouse complain about the number of minatures you own4,000 Points
Have painted miniatures1,000 Points
Per campaign you've played in the last 5 years200 Points
Per campaign you've run in the last 5 years500 Points
If you ran or played in a campaign prior to 20002,000 Points
Currently running in a campaign1,000 Points
Currently playing in a campaign50 Points
Per prepared module you've ran250 Points
Per campaign you've participated in that lasted over 6 months of weekly play (24 sessions)2,500 Points
Per campaign you've ran that lasted over 6 months of weekly play (24 sessions)5,000 Points
Per printout contained in your Dungeon Master Notebook or Per Page in your character sheet folder10 Points
Have a FLAILSNAILS PC.500 Points
Have more than one FLAILSNAILS PC's2,000 Points
Have more than 10 FLAILSNAILS PC's5,000 Points
Have a D&D or RPG blog4,000 Points
Have over 100 followers or 300 daily hits6,000 Points
Have over 300 followers or 1000 daily hits10,000 Points
Have over 1000 followers or 2500 daily hits20,000 Points
Had a player character die25 Points
Had more than 10 player characters die1,000 Points
Ran a campaign with a player character death1,000 Points
Ran a campaign with over 10 player character deaths10,000 Points
For each level you've gained as a PC in the last 5 years500 Points
For each character in a campaign reaching demi-god or greater status10,000 Points
Self-published a Role Playing Game book5,000 Points
Self-published a Role Playing Game book that sold over 100 copies or made over 1000$10,000 Points
Started a publishing company to sell your role playing game books30,000 Points
Had a book you wrote published by a role playing game book publisher20,000 Points
Played in a game over Google Hangouts500 Points
Run a game in a Google Hangout1,000 Points
Attended a convention in the last year1,000 Points
Attended a convention for two consecutive years2,000 Points
Attended a convention for five consecutive years4,000 Points
For ecah convention you've attended500 Points

Levels
1) Neophyte           < 100
2) Novice               101 - 1,000
3) Adept                1,001 - 2,000
4) Veteran              2,001 - 4,000
5) Adventurer           4,001- 8,000
6) Gamer                8,001 - 15,000
7) Expert Gamer         15,001 - 30,000
8) Arch-Gamer           30,001 - 50,000
9) Game Master          50,001 - 100,000
10) Game Lord           100,001 - 150,000
11) Game Lord (2)       150,001+

I have 93,975 experience. Game Lord here I come!

On the Misrepresentation of Facts II

Did you hear, the blogosphere is dying!

Rank Idiocy.

Some people have commented lately that there don't seem to be as many blog posts as of late. They have drawn the conclusion from this that the era of OSR and blogging is done!

Here are today's "MYTHS OF THE BLOGOSPHERE" dispelled.

The blogosphere/role-playing/gaming is dying!

For those of you lost at home, let's take a look at exactly what is happening.

  1. It's summer. People universally post less in the summer, because gaming is a seasonal activity.
  2. Both I and Chris Kutalik of Hill Cantons have recently become new fathers. 
  3. Heavy hitting bloggers like Jeff Reints (Broodmother Sky Fortress), Michael Curtis (Dungeon Alphabet Reprint), and James Maliszewski (Dwimmermount) are hard at work on new projects. I've had fewer opportunities to post because I've been busy at work finishing Alchemy.
  4. People are actually gaming a lot more, which means more discussion on G+, more time spent playing games, and more time spend using blogs for archival purposes instead of actual discussion.
  5. For all the people who have lost interest and drifted out of blogging, new people have been drifting in, and you haven't been adding them. So although the blogosphere is as rich as it ever was, you just aren't reading it!
Everyone misses the old days and wishes that Cyclopetron would post again, or Sham, or that Gogonmilk might post more often. Even older, how nice it would be to see another post from the old days of Sickly Purple Death Ray or more frequent updates from Beyond the Black Gate.
So what to do about your blogsphere being empty? Here are the current heavy hitters in the blogosphere. I've given a bit of description to each one, so you aren't clicking through blindly. I'd bold the ones worth following, but if they are in the list, they are worth following.

Now can we stop propagating myths and get back to writing about games?

On the Misrepresentation of Facts Part I

Something has got my burr up.

I would hope my loyal readers would be smarter than the average bear.

I bet if you owned a railroad, you would be pretty bitter business isn't as good as it was in 1880, right? I mean we're much worse off now, aren't we? Doesn't it take longer to ship goods and cross the country?

What an Aquamaroon!

Blogs are sources of information and news. The natural tendency is to notice one or two things and extrapolate general trends. This is foolish.

Here are today's "MYTHS OF THE BLOGOSPHERE" dispelled.

Megadungeons are old hat/No fun/Out of vogue

So there was an article and a meme about 2000 copper and some rats. There was also some discussion about how a single session of Dwimmermount didn't go well for a single group. The Era of the Megadungeon Must be Over! 

Uh, whatever. 

In the year 2000 there were just a handful published mega-dungeons, Temple of Elemental Evil, Teagle Manor and Undermountain. Castle Greyhawk was a myth.

Today, in addition to Dwimmermount of the 2000 copper meme, there is Barrowmaze, Stonehell, Castle of the Mad Archmage, Rappan Athuk, Anomalous Subsurface Environment,  Numenhalla, and Worlds Largest Dungeon (Don't bother so much with that last one), as well as several others in development on G+, Blogs, and Forums, (Most notably by Benoist Poire)

Oh, you say, but those aren't very popular or good.
  1. Rappan Athuk kickstarted 246,541$
  2. Barrowmaze II kickstarted 12,702$ For an OSR project.
  3. Barrowmaze reviews: "Wow." "Instant Classic" "Worth getting for the joy of reading alone".
  4. The most popular game ever on G+ was a megadungeon not listed above!
Oh, you say, but these aren't very original.
  1. Here is Keith Davies Multi-part theory series about Mega-Dungeon Node Design.
  2. Here is the new, great Megadungeons.com website, covering all megadungeon news!
  3. Here is an obscene amount of work collected at the first of this year.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it. The era of the megadungeon lives!

On the Preparation

Better than original content, it'sa bandwagon! (From Roger, Noisms, and RPG.net)

I'd like to start by saying; Noisms, I would have rather read about druids.

No one "doesn't prepare" for running a game. It's one of the things about role playing that makes it different than any other game.

It has to do with how you choose to prepare. Sometime during the week you're thinking about things during the game.

  • Lazyness when it comes to prepration has created the worst gaming sins imaginable
  • Being "not lazy" does not take a lot of work
What are the worst sins? Railroading. Off the cuff wildness. Off the cuff mediocrity. Wasting other players time as you reference at the table.

That not bad enough?

We all prepare for the game. The idea is to do it in a way that isn't shitty to your players. Unless that's your thing, and you'd like to defend forcing other people to listen to you blather on about some crap you just came up with off the top of your head.

If you were that interesting, you'd probably have earned more money last year.

Since you're preparing anyway, why not just do it well?  What does that mean?

I spend my "prep time" for a session doing just one thing. Discovering the minimum about of strokes I can make on a sheet that will avoid the sins above.(Even if it doesn't seem like it.)

That means, I create dynamic complex environments from where the players tell me where they are going next. I then figure out a way to represent those environments on paper in a minimalistic way as possible so that I can be present during the actual play of the game - using my improvisational skills to describe the environment the players inhabit instead of trying to create an interesting game from them.

Does it take a long time? Not particularly. Since I enjoy it, I spend more time than I need to. But you can spend an hour of prep to cover weeks of in play content. I will get 3-6 weeks of play from a 60 room dungeon with one map page, 2-3 pages of room information and 1 page of treasure, taking 4-6 hours to prepare. Doesn't 6 hours a month seem like reasonable prep time?

Some thoughts I have:
  • If you think someone's anecdote about "some game they didn't prepare for went just great" means that it's a good idea to go without preparation, then the nicest thing I can say about you is that you lack the ability to engage in rigorous thinking.
  • Nobody can be prepared for any eventuality. Concluding from this that you shouldn't prepare for any eventuality puts you in the category above.
  • This is an example of where an array of quantum encounters can can come in useful without impacting agency.
  • Improvisation is a GM skill from necessity, not desire.
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